


Pavlov's blankie

by marieincolour



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Schmoop, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 16:44:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieincolour/pseuds/marieincolour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been having trouble sleeping for years. He's tried everything from meditation to medication to drinking himself stupid, but when he finally finds something that works, it's purely by accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pavlov's blankie

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: English is my first language, but I'm not American. Forgive me. It's late at night, and this has not been beta read, so I apologise for all the weird stuff I've probably left in here by accident. And while this was meant to be a bit disorienting and weird, it wasn't meant to be incoherent and stupid. Don't judge me too harshly, I'm only having a bit of fun. 8D
> 
> Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me, I'm merely borrowing them. I mean no harm, and I'm not making any money on any of this.

  


He has long stretches of time where he can't sleep, no matter how much his brain has slowed down and his eyes lag and his mouth stumbles over familiar words. It doesn't matter how many times he turns his pillow and duvet in the hopes that the cool fabric will be enough to ease him off to sleep. Most of the time he flips and flips them until the covers are damp with the sweat coating his body, dribbling into the sheets and pooling at the bottom of his neck. His heart pounds and pounds and _pounds_ until he doesn't know what to do with himself, and in the dark of his room in the middle of the night his head thinks sometimes that it might jump out of his chest, or beat so fast that it drops rhythm and he'll fade away. He'll fall asleep – _almost –_ and dream that he's putting a foot out to go down a set of stairs, but instead of reaching the next step down he falls and falls, but doesn't ever land. Or that he's tumbling through glass windows, expecting the blow of the glass against his body but never feeling it, jolting awake in something akin to terror. 

When medical discharge him with painkillers he doesn't stop taking them when the pain fades and he heals, because they put him out. Like an animal, right out, blinking heavy eyes up at the ceiling until he fades, the whites of his eyes showing through half-closed slits. Cough syrup, painkillers, codeine, but never alcohol. Never, ever alcohol. Not anymore.

In daylight the little things make him laugh. Things said in meetings and in the back of helicopters, meant to be fun and only slightly hurtful. Reactions to things he says, things he does or doesn't do. He shakes it all off with not quite a grin, but no tears, either. 

But in his bed at night it's like they all gather around his bed with the moments he doesn't care to remember on repeat, until all he can see in his mind are distorted versions of the world around him. 

Clint Barton doesn't always sleep well. 

Sometimes he does. Sometimes sleep is so deep it feels like a coma, and he wakes up groggy and disoriented, stiff from not moving for hours, and that's what people think he does. Sleep like the dead, or like children do, all limp limbs and warm skin.

But mostly he spends his nights away from missions and recon and whatever the fuck else trying to work himself into exhaustion, hoping he'll fall into bed and be dead asleep before his head hits the pillow. 

Most of the time he's left alone in the gym with aching legs that punch the air again and again and _again,_ slapping against the rubber of the treadmill, or notching and releasing arrows at dizzying speeds until his muscles quiver with pain and lactic acid. 

He's tried warm milk. He tried  _ not  _ sleeping, napping during the day and with people around and all alone and in different rooms and new mattress and going to sleep all warm and post-bath and now he's just left with startling amount of rituals that he  _ needs  _ to go through before he can put his mind to rest and maybe, if he's real lucky, fall asleep. 

_ Bathteapajamascleanbedreadpullouthearingaidscheckalarmdrinkwatergotothebathroomturnoffthelightsfliptheduvet.  _

Sometimes, before he passes out on a cold floor that rumbles with engine power, bruised and sore and exhausted, mind reeling with debriefing material and the needs of his equipment and the people around him, missions and maps and calculations, radio static and hearing aids that make his ears tingle with the kind of pain you get from socks with too tight elastic left on for too long, he thinks about how ridiculous it is that he can't sleep unless everything is _perfect._

Clint Barton. Assassin, sniper, secret agent and prissy little princess at your service.

-

It's going on day three with little to no sleep when he finds himself sitting at the edge of his bed, huge bag of laundry to fold, fresh from the dryer down the hall with the washing room where pairs of socks go to get divorced and dust gathers in clumps the sizes of cats under tables and baskets, with a hoodie that doesn't belong to him in his hands. It's soft, fleecy and dark blue. Fuzzy. Warm, but not _too_ warm between his fingers, and silky along the edge. _Coulson,_ it says in sharpie on the tag. The blood stains are almost gone, only slightly darker than the original fleece lining. He wraps it around is hand, blinks down at it. It feels different against the thinner skin on the top of his hands, where arrows and bows and guns haven't thickened the skin. Silky. Distracting.

A hand on his neck wakes him up sometime later, and he tries to slide out of the cocoon he's made out of his duvet and the hoodie still wrapped tightly around his fist, trapped against stomach where his t-shirt has ridden up. He sleeps on his side when he can, and he has to twist around to look up at the person sitting at his hip on the edge of the mattress. Phil talks to him, voice soft and far, far away. Clint's hearing aids hang uselessly from the backs of his ears where the battery packs cling on for dear life because the deep sleep has dislodged them badly enough that he can't hear much of _anything,_ really. Coulson's fingers run through his hair, snagging at the places where it stands up, electric and tangled from the pillowcase. Clint yawns. Blinks lethargically up at the man, trying to stay awake a little bit longer. Phil probably wants something. To talk, plan, reconnect, whatever. His fingers twitch inside the fleecy fabric, and the cool hand at his neck rubs a little harder than necessary, loosening tight muscles there. He can feel his eyelids get heavier, drooping almost shut just as the steady thump of his heart starts to speed up again, but the warm, fuzzy fabric around his fists pull him down.

It's the first bit of real, deep, healthy sleep he's had in _forever._

_-_

He keeps the hoodie. Coulson asks for it once or twice, probably thinking that Clint just fell asleep accidentally while folding laundry and has forgotten to give it back, but Clint folds it up under the top of his duvet every morning, hidden from view when you enter his quarters. Twirls it in between his fingers and tight in his fist up against the bare skin of his chest before he goes to sleep, the zippers and buttons on the front of the fabric folded inwards so the cold metal wont shock him out of sleep. Anxiety tugs at the edges of his mind, and he still flips the duvet and the pillow more often than necessary, the smell of cold tea from the cup on the nightstand, but he focuses on his hands. On the fuzz. Soft. Warm.

And sometimes, when that doesn't help, he tugs the hoodie up under his cheek and tries harder.

He's like one of Pavlov's dogs, training himself to fall asleep at the touch of fleece. Self-inflicted Pavlovian response, he says in his head, and something at the back chortles in a mocking kind of way.

-

Sometimes he has to leave his room so fast he doesn't have the time to do anything about the tea on his nightstand or Coulson's fleece hoodie in his bed, and when he returns he has to shut the door quickly to make sure no one can see the black mold growing in the cup or the jumper he keeps in bed, even if it doesn't look like more than laundry a little bit out of place.

Coulson takes offense to the door being shut in his face, though. He flips it back open just in time to see Clint tug the blue garment away from the bed, lobbing it haphazardly into the laundry basket from across the room. He picks it up between two fingers, like it's something dirty and nasty.

«So _that's_ where that went. I was wondering if you were ever going to give it back.»

Coulson takes the hoodie with him when he leaves a few minutes later, a stack of papers held tightly in his other hand, and Clint dreads going to bed almost as much as he does finishing his mission reports.

_You didn't even have_ it _a month ago, and you were_ fine.

It's a lie, and he knows it. 

-

«...Barton.  _ Barton. Mr. Clinton Fucking Barton!  _ You with us? _ » _

Sitwell slams both his fists down into the table he's resting his elbows against, and it jostles Clint out of his stupor almost as much as the sarcastic voice does.

«Uhh. Yeah. What? 'M sorry.»

«I know it's been a long week, and I know you're tired from all this  _ nothing  _ you've been indulging in, but would you  _ please _ just so much as pretend to pay attention? Now, as I was saying, this area here...»

Clint rubs his eyes and tries to keep his mind on the blueprints of a building projected in front of him, disregarding Sitwell's . He should care. Should watch and pay attention and know  _ everything  _ about this building when he's there tomorrow morning, right down to locating a power outlet or a faucet or whatever. Holy  _ fuck,  _ he needs some good sleep, though. 

They ship out in the middle of the night, and he's almost ridiculously grateful that he doesn't have to pretend to go to bed and twist around in increasingly sweaty sheets all night. Sitwell is cranky and stressed out, because this kind of mission, the kind where they go barging in when the people in the building they're targeting are least expecting it, isn't the kind he usually takes on. Clint knows that he's doing everything he can to plan for all the things that could happen, but he doesn't really care. Exhaustion drums through him, and he can feel the anxious, itchy pulse of his heart in his chin and fingers and toes and  _ skin  _ pulsating up in the right corner of his vision in a tiny little speck of colour. 

He sleepwalks through the mission like a zombie, cocky and arrogant in his ability to follow protocol and orders down to the smallest detail. The radio crackles loudly in his ear, and it hurts almost as much as the recoil from the gun he has in his hands up against his shoulder. He tries to slow down his breathing just as everything goes to shit around him, and there's nothing to do but  _ locate target. Take target down. Locate next target.  _

He passes out on the floor on the way back to the states, feeling hollow and numb.

-

None of his routines work. No new techniques do anything but add another link to his increasingly long list of pre-bedtime routines. He cuts out caffeine completely, does his utmost to stay away from spicy food and scary movies, and even tries to drill in a new meditation thing that's supposed to put all those  _ bad, negative thoughts  _ away where they can't find him.

They do anyway, and he spends a month moving around the hellicarrier like a ghost. 

«Your blood pressure is up, you've lost weight, you're hardly ever on the range anymore, and... You're not even listening. Barton!»

A set of fingers snap in front of his face, and Clint makes a soft «Hmf?» as he straightens up in his seat. «Yeah, 'm listenin'. What's up?»

«Are you sleeping at  _ all,  _ Clint?» Phil sighs, rubbing his forehead in that strange way he has. Clint watches his mouth, the way it almost looks like he's smiling even when he's not. 

«Sometimes,» he sighs back. «Mostly not.»

Phil watches him carefully for a minute, then goes back to filling out the papers in front of him like Clint isn't even there. Clint tries to pretend that he doesn't feel his heart pumping like a Duracell bunny in his chest. 

-

He's sent home to his flat once medical get their hands on him and declare him unfit to be sent out into the field. He pads around in sweats and an ancient t-shirt, trying to remember what he does when he's at home so he doesn't lose his mind to boredom. Buys an x-box. Spends an hour reading the manual and pressing buttons and understanding  _ nothing _ before deciding that his closet needs rearranging and his entire flat needs cleaning. It's daylight when he begins, the city around him crowded and awake.

When Coulson lets himself in he's knee deep in clothes, his eyes red-rimmed and watery, and the sky outside is orange with the sun just starting to come up, the city around them asleep and quiet. Dead. The building trembles as a train rumbles through underneath them somewhere, but it might just be his heart. 

«Jesus Christ, Barton. Did someone break in?»

Clint blinks up at the soft din of a voice above him, but his hearing aids are folded away in the little plastic box they came in, and Phil swims a little bit in his vision.

«'m cleaning.» He says, twisting his fingers in a piece of clothing that's scratchy and stiff and _wrong._ Phil watches him for a moment, eyes sad and his mouth doing that smiley-thing that isn't a smile at all. He sits down on the bed, and the _maybe-_ pile tips over behind him, half-folded t-shirts and hoodies tumbling down to the carpet floor. His hands are soft on Clint's shoulders as they pull him back to lean against him, pulling the jeans in his hands away and throwing them over to the _hell no-_ pile. Clint is almost impressed with his aim as the pile stays standing, almost perfectly balanced.

He can tell that Phil is talking to him, but putting his ear up against the soft, pale fabric of Phil's shirt covered stomach does nothing to help him hear what it is. The hand on his chest shakes him roughly a moment later, pointing down to a carefully wrapped parcel held out in front of them. 

«For me?» he asks, and fingers run through his hair, scratching along his scalp. He moans, he thinks. Maybe. 

His fingers are shaky as he pulls away the tape holding the paper together, and because he isn't paying enough attention he's holding the thing upside down so the content tumbles into his lap when he's gotten it halfway open. It's a dark-blue thing, with bright red.. 

His breath hitches, his heart slows down. It's a dark blue piece of fleece, with a bright red satin lining and a tiny white tag in one corner where it says  _ Coulson  _ with a sharpie. 

He turns to look up at Phil, the blanket clutched tightly in his fist just in time to see him say «...I'm sorry I didn't realize before, I thought you were just...»

But then he's turning back down to run his fingers over the fuzzy fabric even though it's  _ incredibly  _ rude to turn away in the middle of a sentence, embarrassed and a little bit touched all at once. The fingers scratching his scalp have stopped. Are tugging him upwards, towards the bed that's covered in clothes and fabric and everything that wasn't right and didn't work. He holds the blanket tighter, petting it unconsciously while Coulson clears the bed for the two of them.

He's  _ not _ a thirty something-old man with a blankie. He's just  _ not,  _ but before he can really think about it and tell himself why he's none of those things, he's got something soft and fuzzy under his cheek and inside his fists, and even with Phil watching and none of his usual routines at hand it's hard to keep his eyes open. 

-

«I had a bear when I was a kid» Phil says just as Clint takes his first sip of coffee that evening, his hair ruffled and tangled, one leg of his sweatpants hitched up somewhere around his knee. He chokes on the bitter, stale liquid. 

«I'm sorry?» He manages to get out, turning around and frowning at the look of amusement on Phil's face. «How is this,» - he gesticulates wildly with the half-full cup - «Funny!?»

«How is it not?» Phil replies, pulling him in with a hand around Clint's waist. «How did you sleep?»

Clint sips his coffee as he sits down in Phil's lap. Phil pulls him in with an arm around his waist. 

«I had a bear when I was a kid. His name was Scout. Like my dog.»

«Seriously?» Clint grins over his cup. 

«Yeah. Had him for years. He's still at my house, actually, inside one of those bags that keep him safe from sunlight and air and everything bad that'll ruin him. He's lacking a nose, now, because Scout – the dog – bit it off. Didn't manage to get to sleep without him until I was nearly twenty.»

Clint has to remind himself how he fell asleep the previous night to stop himself from laughing.

«And I'm going to bet that you didn't have that when you were a kid.»

Clint chokes on his coffee again. «I had handouts and charity and the things other kids left behind when I was a kid» Clint says, and his voice sounds harsh even to himself, but he supposes Phil has a point with this. 

«I'm just saying,» Phil says, and Clint folds his head in against Phil's neck, licking at a patch of salty skin there. «If I was having trouble sleeping, I would probably get Scout out. The bear, mind you, because to get the dog I'd have to go digging, and I have a feeling a few people would take offense to that.»

«Hm.» Clint agrees, wondering how Phil would act with a hickey on his neck while debriefing a mission or cancelling world war three or doing something equally important. A hand comes up to stop him, and he's pulled away until he's face to face with Phil, meeting his eyes. 

«I'm just saying,» he tries again, «that if my fleece hoodie helps you sleep, that can  _ only  _ be a good thing.»

Clint can feel himself blushing, but in his mind he's already named the blanket. 

Pavlov. 

It's only fitting. 

-fin-


End file.
